Autograph letter signed : Beaconsfield, to Luke Gardiner, 1778 August.

Concerning the passage of a bill: congratulating Gardiner on "the Success of a Measure which you conceived with so much Judgment, & carried through with so much Spirit & ability"; writing further that "You have, for the first time, got the Government of the Country to acknowlege & protect all its Subjects; & I am sure that those Subjects & that Government are equally obliged to you; the one for their Liberty; the other for its security, quiet, strength, & reputation"; discussing the creation of the bill and religious tests: "It is very unfortunate, that the dissenters clause was ever obtruded into your Bill, or ever thrust out of it. A qualification for Office & a qualification for property are unquestionably things very different; & should never be jumbled together in one regulation. But as the manufacture of a Law is never so essential as its substance, it is infinitely to be regretted, that Government did not see the evident policy of reconciling one great body of its people to the other, & of binding both by common obligations to the common authority of the State. I am persuaded, that until Something of this kind is done with regard to the Protestant Dissenters, the Scheme of toleration can never be compleated up to the Standard of your equitable & Liberal Ideas"; discussing relations between Catholics and Protestant dissenters: "When Catholicks are tolerated, Dissenters will never be satisfied with a meer toleration. Those who are long used to power over others, will consider a condition of equality as a State of Degradation"; writing of Ireland: "You have indeed made Ireland doubly dear to me by your excellent Bill. You have made those who were Countrymen, become fellow Citizens; Before this, they were only the worse Enemies for the accident of a Common birth place. But they begin to coalesce; & I trust you will live to see & enjoy the good you have done, in the total extinction of all Spirit of party which has religious opinions for its principle."